August 15, 2017

James Alex Fields Jr. was barely a teenager in 2010 when his mother — who uses a wheelchair — locked herself in a bathroom, called 911 and said her son had struck her head and put his hands over her mouth when she told him to stop playing a video game, according to police records....

In the 2010 call, Bloom... said her son was taking medication to control his temper...

In October of the following year, Bloom called 911 to say that her son was “being very threatening toward her” and that she didn’t feel “in control of the situation,” according to a dispatcher’s notes.

And in November 2011, police were asked to come to the house because Bloom was said to want her son to be assessed at a hospital, according to the records. He had spat in her face, said the caller, whose connection to the family is not clear in the records.

The previous night, Fields had stood behind his mother with a 12-inch knife, the caller reported. “Scared mom to death not knowing if he was going to do something,” the dispatcher’s report continued.

Does this make the organizers of the Unite the Right less responsible? Maybe. But you always know mentally unstable, violent people are out there. You should not act like a magnet for them. You should not draw them into a phantasmagoric environment and pump them up with confusing, exciting, chanted words.

I remember the Wisconsin protests, I was worried about the mental health of some of the lost souls who gravitated to the scene. On March 1, 2011, I wrote:

There are young people in the Wisconsin Capitol who have been there, sleep deprived, for 15 days and are truly suffering.

I just watched video Meade brought home, and I am not going to put it on line. But I can tell you, there is at least one person there who has lost his mind from (apparently) sleep deprivation.

Someone needs to go around to everyone who is still there and check them for mental stability. Somebody needs to find the people who need to leave and don't know how to leave. If you are encouraging people to stay, to hang on and remain tough, you need to know that there are some truly sad people there who need to be told that they've done enough and must leave now.

Please, for the love of God, go around to the human beings who are there and talk to them individually. I know you believe in your cause, but there is at least one person among you who needs love and needs to be saved!

89 comments:

These White Supremacist guys almost always come from the dregs of society. They are low, and they want to blame someone for their lack of success. People who think these guys represent "white people" or that the majority of white people agree with this mentality need to look at the guys like Fields who are really involved. They aren't the movers and the shakers, the dreamers and the doers.

Not defending his beliefs, but it seems wrong to use someone's behavior as a teenager to define him as an adult. Isn't that why juvenile criminal records are kept out of the public domain? How many times have I read in the paper that a criminal's name is not being revealed because he/she is a juvenile?

I saw an article about Fields that he washed out of army boot camp. Big red flag. To do so, one must be a real under-achiever. Not to be too harsh, but he seems like a young loser, who migrated towards a right wing, political "grievance committee" to help process his own loser status. Blaming others for one's "misfortunes" is a common tactic.

He killed a young woman with his car; maybe it was intentional, maybe he panicked and was negligent. But he needs to account for this, and it is good that he was arrested.

It is impossible to devise a content-neutral 'don't incite madmen' exception to the First Amendment. To avoid looking at the words themselves you need to examine moral agency and intent.Does this Bloom person have free will or not? Is their an intent on the Unite the Right leadership to manipulate people like Bloom into committing violent acts?

As for the Madison protesters, what did you want them to do? They can't leave or they fail to show sufficient fealty to the movement. And they learned from the Occupy rally that sleeping in your tent leaves you exposed to rape.

MayBee said...These White Supremacist guys almost always come from the dregs of society. They are low, and they want to blame someone for their lack of success. People who think these guys represent "white people" or that the majority of white people agree with this mentality need to look at the guys like Fields who are really involved. They aren't the movers and the shakers, the dreamers and the doers.

I agree with this basic sentiment except for the 'dregs'. Once a society begins to fall apart enormous stress is placed on the lives of the young people who grow up in those societies. This stress is psychologically distorting for the young. For those of us who grew up in middle class or better environments it is difficult to conceive of the shit holes that these kids grow up in and just how incredibly stressful their lives have been from birth. It is the youthful equivalent of PTSD only worse because they know nothing else and they were exposed to the stress at such an early age.

A lot of people are eulogizing Heather Heyer and quoting her Facebook profile-- "If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention"Now, I'm not going to say anything about her because she was an innocent woman who was murdered. But a lot of people *like* that phrase and a lot of people are praising it.

But how healthy is it to be perpetually outraged? And about what? There is so much beauty in this life, and in this country. So much opportunity. And for those who we think are disadvantaged, so many ways to help them. What is the point/purpose of being perpetually outraged? Shouldn't we find people who feel this way and pull them out of their mire, rather than encourage this mentally unhealthy state of being?

"The Scalise shooter seems to have been a more balanced and mainstream person."

-- Not sure if that is true. Dude drove across a country after leaving home to make a kill list of Republicans because he was convinced they wanted to kill millions of American citizens. That's... not exactly balanced or mainstream.

I agree with this basic sentiment except for the 'dregs'. Once a society begins to fall apart enormous stress is placed on the lives of the young people who grow up in those societies. This stress is psychologically distorting for the young. For those of us who grew up in middle class or better environments it is difficult to conceive of the shit holes that these kids grow up in and just how incredibly stressful their lives have been from birth. It is the youthful equivalent of PTSD only worse because they know nothing else and they were exposed to the stress at such an early age

Good point.Perhaps rather than pointing fingers and doxxing these guys, we need to address their circumstances. It seems like something the left would usually like to take on-- the whole "why do they hate us" thing, but this time the "us" being a part of our society.

Surprise, surprise. Unite the Right is a Soros sponsored and organized recruitment tool for volunteers to,play the bad guys in staged riots.

Sadly, There are many socially retarded young teens who find a tribe home in paranoia based propaganda cults. The John Burch Society was the first big one, and it destroyed many antisemetic Nazi lovers that it easily seduced under a cover of " be the only ones who know the truth."

Matthew Sablan:because he was convinced they wanted to kill millions of American citizens. That's... not exactly balanced or mainstream.

I would say this viewpoint is currently being....if not encouraged, not actually discouraged...by the major media and politicians in our country.After Trump was elected, a lot of media outlets- even better ones like Jake Tapper- covered the "but people are afraid! and they feel their fears are legitimate" stories. A comedian on the Adam Carolla podcast the day after the election said he and his kids were afraid they were going to be sent to camps.

We certainly aren't in a period of time when people's unreasonable fears are being tamped down by those with a microphone/ink.

A juvenile Court record is confidential so that rich idiot kids between 14 and 18 get a mulligan an don't ruin their life. But it is always open for sentencing on subsequent offenses done by them over 18.

I think its plain that young directionless people will latch onto anything that they come into contact with. I dated a girl that got wound up with a Christian Cult. They just effused love and caring, and at the time, the poor girl wasn't getting it from her somewhat dysfunctional family. Gangs, ditto. What about the ANTIFA crowd? Young directionless people. These youngsters have no understanding of the talking points they regurgitate. Gee, the leftist hear can't stay with single unwavering core value. Half way through the comments, they completely shift their values.

''But you always know mentally unstable, violent people are out there. You should not act like a magnet for them. You should not draw them into a phantasmagoric environment and pump them up with confusing, exciting, chanted words."

Did Obama know about these people when he was encouraging BLM cop killers? Inquiring minds want to know. And widows in Dallas.

President inciting hatred of ethnic groups rather than engaging in a rational discussion of the economic effects of immigration = current results.

We haven't had a president willing to engage in a rational discussion of the economic effects of immigration in over a decade. And we didn't have a major party candidate this time around willing to do so either.

Hillary's "No person is illegal!"and Obama's "What are they afraid of? Women and Children?" = people longing to hear something that feels more honest when it comes to immigration.

After the terrible death of Heather Heyer just days ago, the President actually tweeted an image of a train hitting a figure with the CNN logo superimposed on its head this morning. Taken down, but not before it was retweeted and screencapped hundreds of times. What should we make of that propensity do you think? Gross insensitivity? Headspining narcissism? Wink to the white supremacy contingent?

My partner works with autistic kids and she says there are a few mothers who talk about how violent their sons can be. They are not budding serial killers or anything but they lash out when they are frustrated.

It must be terrible to be parent of violent child and not know what to do. After Adam Lanza/Sandy Hook shooting, I remember reading a few articles by mothers with sociopathic children and the constant state of terror the families are in. There are well known signs for troubled teens but not much authorities can do about it until they snap and start killing.

After the terrible death of Heather Heyer just days ago, some TV shows and movies actually showed the image of an actor being hit by a car, possibly in a drama, maybe in a comedic sense or maybe somewhere in between.

This seems to be consistent across the Right. Look up the bio's of Robert Dear (Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood mass shooter, 2015), and Scott Roeder (assassinated abortion doctor George Tiller, 2009). Not quite the dregs, but you can see it from there. Uneducated, financially insecure, were motivated by Christian faith, but had only tenuous attachment to organized religion or a specific church. Or attachment to anyone else, really. Both Dear and Roeder had "involvement with the criminal justice system" on and off over the years.Compare this to the typical perpetrator of Islamic terror in the US.The critical element is, I believe, whether or not these individuals were recruited and directed by an organization. As far as I know, no R wing terrorist in the US has part of a larger organization (not since the KKK was neutered in the 1950s -- 1960s). Even the Oklahoma City bombing was the result of a very small, closely knit conspiracy that involved just four people.

"The president also retweeted a post from another user featuring a cartoon depicting a train with "Trump" written on the side running over an individual with a CNN logo for its head. The post was similar to one that landed Trump in hot water earlier this summer, when the president posted an animated image of himself from a professional wrestling appearance tackling an individual with a CNN logo for a head. Trump's Tuesday morning CNN cartoon was quickly removed from Trump's feed.

One retweet that remained on the president's feed came Monday night from alt-right figure Jack Posobiec, who complained online that violent crime in Chicago had not recieved the same media attention as a deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Posobiec is active in alt-right social media circles and has posted tweets promoting baseless conspiracy theories alleging that prominent Democrats had run a child sex ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria.

Why are people assuming Fields came from "the dregs of society"? I've seen no evidence that his family was extremely poor, or full of criminals, druggies, or alcoholics. His problems seem to be more specific. His father was killed by a drunk driver before he was born - that would tend to make anyone feel like his life was wrecked before it started. His mother's paraplegic - was she injured in the same accident that killed his father, or did that happen later? If the former, she must have given birth after she was paralyzed, and he's never had a normal upbringing. If the latter, then both his parents suffered separate horrible accidents. Either way, he was born into a really unfortunate family. There's been no mention of siblings. If he's spent much or all of his life being the sole family support and caretaker of his wheelchair-bound mother, it's not surprising that he has severe mental and emotional issues. It would be surprising if he were totally well-adjusted.

Since his emotional problems include racism, I'm still wondering whether the drunk driver who killed his father was non-white. If some black supremacist murderer's father had been killed by a drunk driver before he was born, we'd have heard in the first 24 hours if the drunk driver was white, and we'd feel at least a twinge of sympathy for the guy. Are reporters afraid to ask for fear of making the guy more sympathetic, or are they just too stupid to ask?

Unknown said...He is exactly the kind of sociopath that joins these Alt Right White Supremacy movements. Absolutely no surprise

Thanks for that contribution. I'm curious though, what happened in your meatspace life that makes you wake up so full of hate every morning? Or is your life really so useless posting stupid shit to irritate those you hate is the best use you can make of it?

"Posobiec is active in alt-right social media circles and has posted tweets promoting baseless conspiracy theories alleging that prominent Democrats had run a child sex ring out of a Washington, D.C. pizzeria."

-- Yeah, and? Posobiec gets retweeted by the President and believes crazy things. Obama literally uses terrorist Ayers to help him with political decisions and no one cares. So, sorry. It takes a lot more than a retweet for the world to care about how stupid Posobiec is, because the rules as written say that accepting and embracing unrepentent terrorists is perfectly acceptable for politicians, so, a conspiracy theorist is... a small fry. I wish Trump didn't retweet the guy, but I'm consistent in my wish for a more rational discourse.

Only Ctrl-Left trolls print direct quotations without telling us who they're quoting. Whoever wrote the quoted words in Unknown's 9:59am tweet uses rhetoric so slanted as to be dishonest. Calling Chicago "violent" and Charlottesville "deadly" makes the latter look considerably worse, though Chicago has more murders every weekend than Charlottesville had on Saturday, and that's assuming it was murder and not a total screwup by a half-crazy man fleeing for his life from a mob with clubs whose accomplices were intentionally blocking the street to keep people like him from escaping.

Does this make the organizers of the Unite the Right less responsible?

Early on, even despite the piss-poor reporting on the incident, there were mental health questions.

What it means is that this guy cannot rightly be used as representative of any group, much less to use that group to smear half of the country. But the left and media will continue to do so nonetheless.

"Does this make the organizers of the Unite the Right less responsible? Maybe. But you always know mentally unstable, violent people are out there. You should not act like a magnet for them."

Very sensible advice, but alas no one is listening to it. Certainly no one who organizes or attends these rallies -- they're all about polarization and intensifying the contempt each side has for the other. You often see the same attitude in the political pitches that become fodder for blog-posts here ("Ann, don't you want to retch every time you see Trump on the tube? Send $10 today to ..."), to say nothing of the not-so-occasional bursts of vitriol in the comment threads.

It's the times we live in, and the way students today are being carefully taught.

Does this make the organizers of the Unite the Right less responsible?

To even ask the question, however, is to NOT GET IT.

The question of responsibility, legally or morally, is beside the point. This isn't about actual responsibility or actually caring about the dead and injured or about reducing hate. This is about The Narrative. This is about using this as a sword to attack.

People who join violent extremist groups tend to score low on measures of what researchers call “integrative complexity,” a scale of one’s ability to think about things in a nuanced, multifaceted way, explained Alejandro Beutel, who researches violent extremist ideologies.

“People who are the most extreme and the most violent score low on these types of things,” Beutel said. “They often tend to think in very black-and-white ways rather than in much more complex, gray ways.“

This kind of thinking process makes it easier to accept the simplistic ideologies that many of these groups espouse, like the notion that whites make up an “Aryan race” that should be privileged above other racial groups or that there is a worldwide Jewish conspiracy to destroy the white race.

Childhood trauma is another thing that many members of extremist groups have in common. Researchers at the University of Nebraska at Omaha examined the life histories of 44 white supremacists across the U.S. and found that 45 percent said they experienced physical abuse, 21 percent experienced sexual abuse and 46 percent said they were neglected as children — rates that are all higher than the national average but are roughly on par with reported rates of childhood abuse and neglect among people who are incarcerated.

The same study also found that 62 percent had either tried to kill themselves or had seriously considered it, and 57 percent said they had mental health problems either before joining the extremist group or during their time with the group. Seventy-two percent had substance use disorders, and 54 percent had dropped out or been expelled from school.."

Is a bowling league responsible for the actions of it's members? Anyway, there's no evidence that Fields was a member of any group that organized this, or that the organizers knew him or even knew of him. He showed up at a rally, as did thousands of other people.

What happened was that two nationalist-supremacist groups came to blows, both with deep Marxist roots, and each wants to rule over the other. (What did you think they would do, hold hands and sing kum-bah-ya?)

We are calling one side the "alt-right" for no other reason than it's easier to keep score, I guess, like we call one team a home team and the other visitors, but they're both baseball teams. What we really saw in Charlottesville was two far-left groups having at each other because neither will countenance a competitor.

Yes, some of the demonstrators carried Nazi flags, just as some of the counter-demos carried hammer-and-sickle Soviet flags. In fact, those flags are almost interchangeable. Everyone knows and acknowledges that Soviet Communism was based on Marxism, hence Marxism and its spawn today are "Left," but everyone also apparently thinks that Fascism and Nazism apparently just sprang up out of thin air with no relation to political theories and contexts that came before, and that Fascism and Nazism were and are "Right."

Untrue. Both Fascism and Nazism were founded on Marxist theory and belonged firmly on the Left side of the spectrum, according to their founders

People who join violent extremist groups tend to score low on measures of what researchers call “integrative complexity,” a scale of one’s ability to think about things in a nuanced, multifaceted way, explained Alejandro Beutel, who researches violent extremist ideologies.

I'm good with this as long as we are including the anit-fa and the anti-globalization protesters/rioters

A lot of people are eulogizing Heather Heyer and quoting her Facebook profile-- "If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention"Now, I'm not going to say anything about her because she was an innocent woman who was murdered. But a lot of people *like* that phrase and a lot of people are praising it.

But how healthy is it to be perpetually outraged? And about what? There is so much beauty in this life, and in this country. So much opportunity. And for those who we think are disadvantaged, so many ways to help them. What is the point/purpose of being perpetually outraged? Shouldn't we find people who feel this way and pull them out of their mire, rather than encourage this mentally unhealthy state of being?

Perfectly stated. This has been driving me nuts, too. I've been seeing it in on my Facebook page left and right, from people who really ought to know better-pastors, teachers, etc. This is not a healthy way to live.

Yeah, I think the terms "right" and "left" when it comes to extremism is pretty much meaningless.Yesterday CBS ran a story about how much violence has been perpetrated by the right vs. islamic extremists. And aside from the methodology used in counting, I have to wonder why those two are being compared. The right vs Islamic? In the old definitions, it seems almost that the Islamic extremists would be on the right, right? But yet we know they aren't. Do you count them as left, then? Is that why it was the right vs. Islamic?

People who join violent extremist groups tend to score low on measures of what researchers call “integrative complexity,” a scale of one’s ability to think about things in a nuanced, multifaceted way, explained Alejandro Beutel, who researches violent extremist ideologies.. . .

This is like saying that people who murder other people tend to act impulsively. It is a useless definition. What Beutel describes is not a mental illness, it is a facet of human behavior. Why do some people want to create a department of pre-crime?

Do you think it is a factually correct statement to say that Marxist-Leninist regimes murdered 80 to 100 million of their own citizens in the course of the 20th C?

If you think "No", then we have some history we need to work through. But, if you say "Yes", like almost all the posters on this site would, then to see marchers carrying the banners of Marxist-Leninism is every bit as abhorrent as seeing marchers carrying the flag of the National Socialist Party. These banners, both sides, represent the murders of tens of millions of innocent people.

So, I ask you: would you be sorry if some Neo-Nazi had died instead of a Wobbly?

Wow. You have to ask? When it is acceptable to kill another human being. Especially based on the political leanings the victim had. Is this warfare? Is this you giving yourself permission to be judge, jury and executioner? Do I want any Nazi demonstrator killed? NO.

Is there any way to quantify the amount and duration of the hate directed at Fields vs the hatred directed against the Scalise shooter? The fact that I can't offhand recall the name of the Scalise shooter is significant,

I never said it was acceptable to kill Heather Heyer, only that I'm glad she's dead. She was committing a crime and violating EVERYONE'S right to free speech and peaceable assembly. Sic semper crybullies.

Blogger Char Char Binks said..."I never said it was acceptable to kill Heather Heyer, only that I'm glad she's dead. She was committing a crime and violating EVERYONE'S right to free speech and peaceable assembly. Sic semper crybullies."

Is there any way to quantify the amount and duration of the hate directed at Fields vs the hatred directed against the Scalise shooter? The fact that I can't offhand recall the name of the Scalise shooter is significant,

A lot of people are eulogizing Heather Heyer and quoting her Facebook profile-- "If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention" Now, I'm not going to say anything about her because she was an innocent woman who was murdered. But a lot of people *like* that phrase and a lot of people are praising it.

Fields was outraged by the reports of antifa punks attacking Trump supporters, by MSM lies about Trayvon and Micheal Brown, by BLM "Kill the Cops", by cops being assassinated, by "white privilege"

"If you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention" works both ways.

I have never organized, attended, or observed a political protest. I always considered them ineffective and also risky, you never know who is going to show up and how there are going to behave, even as the organizer you have not control over that. I have, many times, been to city council or school board meetings and also served as a volunteer in city government, all of which I found to be more effective at being heard and being able to have some input or influence or policy decisions. I will continue to stay away from protests, even concerning things I am quite passionate about - like civil war monuments.

I have read that this was not just a "dregs of society" misbehaving teen, but that he was on anti-psychotic medications. I would assume that his plea will be that of mental illness when this goes to trial.

"Does this make the organizers of Unite the Right less responsible?" Oh, of course not. Every time the people of the right gather there must be psychological screening of the gatherers to keep the people of the left safe. Uh-huh.

OTOH, to The People of the Lie: When your lefties and their minions, Antifa, BLM, etc., show up at political demonstrations, there is violence. When they don't show up, there is no violence. Period! End of story!

“ ... You should not draw them into a phantasmagoric environment and pump them up with confusing, exciting, chanted words ...”

Silly me for thinking that the last election cycle about “I-am-the-only-one-between-you-and-the-apocalypse” versus “I-am-the-only-one-period-against-the-devil-Hillary,” was all said and done? How could anything escalate beyond such cooler, reasoned passions exhibited in those old, old, really -- old -- just, old voices? What, there are youngsters waiting to board the rides in gentrified Great America?

There are countless parents with severely troubled teens or young adult children who have tried in vain to get help and even begged for their sons to be locked up. Some of these children have gone on to commit serious acts of violence. I agree, Ann. There should be some recourse. And please don't foist mentally ill people off on the criminal justice system, already overwhelmed and ill-equipped to handle them. We need more mental health facilities, including residential.